


no little tree alone can make an arbor

by Counterpunch



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12990987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Counterpunch/pseuds/Counterpunch
Summary: Its late, they can't sleep





	no little tree alone can make an arbor

**Author's Note:**

> After watching OFA, I remembered an old story I never finished, floating on my Google Drive. I polished it up a bit to get it publishable, and here it is! Enjoy a piece of Punchy circa 2014.
> 
> Ripped straight from Buffy. You’ll know the part.

It’s a warm evening in early fall, the kind that summer hasn’t quite let go of yet but instead holds on with fond arms. Night has fallen like a blanket, and with it, the hum of insects buzzes throughout Arendelle. The leaves have just started to turn and a breeze crests through the open window, gently flipping the pages of an open book.

One of Elsa’s bangs droops across her eyes and she tucks it away as the wind catches her attention.

Mused bedsheets lie untouched from where she’d given up on trying to sleep an hour or so earlier. The barest light from the corridor filters in from under the door, but the room itself is bathed in cool blue moonlight. Elsa angles her head and follows the breeze to the windowsill.  Smoothing her hands against the cool grain of the wood, she leans back and breathes in the kingdom. A mix of salt and earth fill her lungs, and when she opens her eyes, a shooting star falls between the cliffs of the fjord.

Letting the breeze pull her forward, Elsa puts a leg up on the ledge and hoists herself into the night.

It takes a moment, as she stands awkwardly in the windowframe, to remember how to balance her body; to be lithe and stretch, soften, and let her limbs be loose.

It’s been a long time since she’d climbed onto the roof. Back Before, Elsa had waited, alert and taut under the covers, counting the bumps and footsteps on the roof above her.

Elsa knew Anna, even when Anna wasn’t allowed to know Elsa, and so she’d keenly mapped out over the first few summer weeks what Anna’s overhead schedule was like when she snuck onto the roof at night; where she preferred to go and when. Nothing could contain Anna, not even buildings.

Elsa had plenty of time to be patient. She waited until Mother and Father were in bed, until the muted thump-thump of footsteps from the roof had pitter-patted away to the bedroom on the other end of the castle and waited _still_ for another ten minutes after that. Just to be safe. (If there’s one thing Elsa was diligent about those days, it was being safe and careful.)

When she was _sure_ , Elsa carefully peeled off the blankets, slid off the bed on her belly, landed on the floor with a soft thump, and hurried to the window. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Elsa snuck out of the window and took careful, excited steps, bracing her hands on the roof for balance. Following a literal trail of crumbs, Elsa eventually came to where Anna camped out sometimes during the day. 

There’d usually be a small basket laden with rocks to weigh it down, a blanket, half a roll in a napkin, and several feathers lining the area Anna would play. She’d trace over every inch of Anna, where she went and what she did (flakes of eggshell and cheese rinds left over from an afternoon picnic littered the awning over the library). Elsa collected scraps of Anna like a starving beggar, and held each seemingly insignificant item like a treasure. Where Anna went, Elsa would follow, and they echoed around each other, dancing like clockwork ghosts on the roof.

When she’d absorbed her fill of Anna, Elsa brought out her book of stars and studied the heavens, trying to map what she saw through the telescope in the library. The sky was different on this side of the castle. Then again, the sky had always been different without Anna no matter which view she had.

That was then.

But now, Elsa closes her eyes to the breeze and her body remembers. Its easier to get to Anna’s spot these days, with longer limbs and confidence propelling her forward (so different from the tentative, desperate, small steps of the past).

“Hey,” a voice greets as Elsa walks on the crest above the library.

“Hey yourself,” Elsa says smoothly and kneels down to take a seat on the blanket next to Anna. “Couldn’t sleep?

Lying down with her arms crossed behind her head, Anna shrugs but doesn’t take her eyes off the sky.

There’s something distant in the way Anna stares at the stars, a melancholic haunting that Elsa’s all too familiar with. Suddenly her sister seems small and she doesn’t like it.

“Nightmares again?”

Anna shrugs once more.

“C’mere,” Elsa says as she shimmies up a bit on her back, opens up an arm and scoops up Anna under it. Anna nestles closer and settles against Elsa’s chest with one hand tucked under her chin. “Better?”

Anna still says nothing. Elsa pauses, and propels forward.

“I used to stargaze for hours,” she admits, almost casually. As if talking about the past was an easy, common occurrence. Anna’s head angles up on her chest and Elsa pretends to not notice her staring. “Not just because the tutors taught us how, I just….liked them.”

“That one right there?” she points, “Cassiopeia.”

Anna makes a humming sound and Elsa feels it vibrate in her chest. She swells.

“No matter what, they made sense. Even when I didn’t. They were predictable, and that was comforting. The stars are big, but…I could disappear in them for a while.”

She moves her arm a few degrees to the right. “Canis Minor,” she points again before bringing her hand back to find Anna’s. They’re cold. She squeezes tighter.

“I still get them, too,” Elsa says after a moment.

“Do they ever go away?” Anna asks in a small voice sounding very much like the child Elsa tore herself away from all those years ago.

“No, but sometimes they get easier. I wake up and remember what’s real. Where’s Kristoff?” she asks, as soft and gently as she can.

“I didn’t want to wake him,” Anna admits.

The three of them try so hard not to cause worry and only end up creating more of it. “We’re still not very good at this, are we.”

“No,” Anna sings, “I suppose not.”

They lapse into silence again, letting the night stretch before them.

“The Big Cloudberry,” Anna says.

“Huh?”

“The Big Cloudberry,” she repeats, pointing far away. “I didn’t always remember the names of all the constellations, so I made up my own. See it? Those three stars there?”

Squinting, Elsa concentrates and follows the direction of Anna’s hand. “Over there by the trees?”

“Yeah! And just above it: Cluster o’ Krumkakes.”

Elsa leans back and laughs. “You know, I think I might like those better.”

“You’re just saying that cause ya love me,” says Anna.

Elsa floods with warmth. Months have passed since the Thaw, but sometimes it all feels so new. Miracles every time.

“Guilty.”

“Ok,” Anna chirps, “You try.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I know you’re working on a good one.”

Elsa squints and scans the stars, looking for new shapes and patterns from the ones she’s so used to seeing. After a moment she reaches out and points. “Duke of Weaselton looking uncomfortable.”

At Anna’s laughter, warm and deep, Elsa knows bad dreams are gone for the night the same way she did when they were little.

The sky’s asleep but Elsa has new stars to sleep under and she wonders if Anna will never not see magic when faced with the large and unexplainable.

They’ve still got a lot to learn and lots of bad habits to fix, but…

Elsa squeezes Anna’s arm and looks at the stars, they’ll get there.

 

 

(The warm breezes must have soothed them to sleep because the next thing Elsa knows, she's jerked awake by a very loud, very piercing scream. “It’s the queen and the princess! They’re gone!”

“Five more minutes,” Anna mumbles sleepily and Elsa turns over, groaning.)


End file.
